Even had sleep overcome Elaine, the explosion must have startled her awake like a wildly fluttering bird.
All her life she had known the sound of guns, but never before had her ears received such an air-splitting shock as this.
Her alarm could know no bounds. It had come so suddenly and unexpectedly; it had been such a cataclysmic destruction of the island's haunting calm! She was certain some hideous blunder had occurred—that Grenville, too, had perished by the thing he had fearlessly dared to create.
She had seen for an instant that fan-like glare, as she gazed far out across the jungle. And now, as she stood there, rigid with fears and fixedly staring at the formless gloom—why did she hear no sound?
"Oh, he might—he might call!" she said, and she tried to halloo, but in vain.
She waited a time that seemed endless for some little sign from the jungle. He had promised before that, if all went well, he would hasten home at once. Surely this promise held good to-night—especially after that explosion!
Perhaps it was not yet time; perhaps it was farther away than she had thought. The glare had seemed near, but he had no torch, and must walk but slowly through the thicket. How dark it must be along the trails, in that tangle growth, with nothing for a light! How could he possibly hasten?
She was standing out on the brink of the wall, staring down at the gloom of the clearing, convinced that her ears, if not her eyes, would detect the first sign of his coming. Just the merest red gleam from the firebrand was all she would ask of the darkness—just that dull little star in the firmament of black!
But the ebon remained unbroken. That he might be lost occurred to her mind, but again she thought it was yet too soon for his return. She stumbled swiftly to the fire again, to stir it to brighter refulgence. It would seem to him a beacon against the sky to guide his footsteps home!
She thought of a blazing brand she could carry to the brink of the wall. With the largest limb afforded by the fire she returned, in haste and eagerness, to wave him a signal of welcome. And still nothing came from the clearing.
"Sidney!" she cried through the stillness, at last. "Sidney! Are you there?"
The night surrendered no response, save some animal cry far off where the barque was rotting.
"If he's dead!" she moaned. "If he's dead!"
But he might be wounded and helpless, she thought, with no one to come to his side. He might not be hurt unto death itself—if aid could reach him now!
If he died—if he left her thus alone—— A thousand times she preferred to die beside him!
"Sidney!" she cried, as before.
With a strange dry note, choked back between her lips, she fled once more to the fire.
Meantime the man by the tiger's kill continued to lie without motion on the earth. Not even the glow of his cheering brand remained like a sign of life in that silent theater.
The jungle cat, smitten and addled in its brain, had dragged itself painfully away to the cover of the thicket, its instinct feebly alive. There was not a sound in all the place, where crash and roar had been so tremendously expended for one prodigious second.
A vague, weird dream came finally creeping intangibly through Grenville's brain, resuming an intermittent function. When at length it began a little to clear, he dreamed he was trying his utmost to rise, but something held him down.
Consciousness poured a trickle through his being, and he felt he was partially awake. Then a flood, a cataract of surging life, rushing back to its centers, brought confusion and tumult to his thoughts. He was still only partially aroused.
His eyes at length were opened. The darkness which their gaze encountered seemed more complete than that of his region of dreams. He attempted to rise, but his muscles and nerves refused their customary obedience to his will. He tried to remember what had happened, but the glancing blow sustained on his chin had blotted him out, temporarily, like a stroke of death itself. And, had the stroke been more direct, his jaw or his neck must have broken.
When he raised his head a bit from the ground and propped himself up on his elbow, the sense of dullness and leadlike weight in both his feet and legs continued unabated. He was battling to retain his consciousness.
He began to remember, slowly. The process was only well started, however, when it was singularly interrupted. He was staring blankly through the jungle, which he partially recollected. It was funny, he thought, how a star should fall and wander through all those aisles of trees.
It was a star, he was fully convinced, coming haltingly through the gloom. Its course was erratic. He lost it at times, but still it persisted in approaching. How beautiful it was—the largest star he had ever known—with its flames divinely ascending.
He sat up stiffly, his will momentarily gaining strength to resume the sway of his body. Some mantle partially fell from his brain, to accompany his physical rousing. Then he knew, not only what had happened, but also what was happening.
"Elaine!" he tried to call aloud, vainly striving to rise or regain the use of his limbs, then once more he sank in oblivion.
A strange, wild note broke from her lips as Elaine came plunging along the trail with a torch redly blazing in her hand, held well above her face.
She saw, before she could reach his side, that the tiger lay lifeless upon him. She feared the man was dead, but, with wits exceptionally clear and ordered, she thrust her torch-end firmly in the earth, laid hold of the huge, limber beast she so fearfully dreaded, and tugged and dragged it feverishly off with all her fine young strength.
The face of the inert man beside the tree was redly smeared with blood. He lay horribly loose and still upon the grass. She knelt at his side and placed her hands upon him, feeling above his heart.
"Sidney!" she said to him. "Sidney! You cannot—you shall not die! I never meant the things I said—or thought—or anything! Oh, please, please don't—don't look like that! You've got to come back—you've got to!"
She tore at the band about his neck and lifted his head on her knee. She wiped the red from his pallid face with the hem of her briar-torn skirt.
"I'll find the spring!" she told him eagerly, starting as if to rise, but the still form moved, and, dully at first, the two heavy eyes were opened.
"Oh!" she said. "Oh, you're hurt. Don't try to do anything but rest.... You didn't come—you didn't come home!"
Despite her entreaty, Grenville weakly raised his head and propped himself, half sitting. The weight being gone from his outstretched legs, his normal circulation was returning. He regained his strength with characteristic swiftness.
"Hurt?" he said. "No—I don't believe—— I must have got a knockout blow. The tiger? Did I get the tiger?"
He sat up uncertainly and, glancing about, saw the huge striped form where Elaine had dragged it from his body. She still remained on her knees, fixedly gazing on his face. Her strength was ebbing rapidly, as Grenville's now returned.
"You didn't come home," she repeated, by way of explaining her presence at his side. "I couldn't live here alone."
Grenville arose and assisted her weakly to her feet. She stumbled to and leaned against the tree.
"By George!" he said, "I'll bet a hat you could!"
He knew what courage had come to her aid before she could make her excursion. "I went down like a dub," he added, in his customary manner. "No good excuse, but I do apologize. Better get out of this, I'm thinking."
He took up the torch she had planted in the earth, to examine the tiger, dead and mangled in the grass, One of the creature's great front paws had been rudely torn from his body. He could only have escaped instantaneous death by having moved from the bomb at the moment of its explosion.
"Your robe looks mussed," Grenville continued, with a gesture towards the animal's motionless body. "But I think it can be washed."
Elaine slightly shivered at sight of the frame now done with life.
"You've killed him," she said. "I'm glad!"
He took her firmly by the arm and led her away through the thicket.
When they reached the camp, Elaine was not yet fully convinced that Grenville was uninjured. She brought him a rag she had torn from some of her clothing and begged him to wash his reddened jaw. Even the restoration of his former stubbled complexion could not suffice to bring her that sense of certainty and calm essential before she could sleep.
She remained beside him at their fire till long past the midnight hour. Indeed, she had made no move to retire when at length the weird, unwelcome disturbance made by the tide had begun its uncanny chorus. Perhaps she had waited for the conclusion of this added feature of the night's long ritual of nerve-attacking events, for she seemed to be considerably cheered when its final wail had died upon the air.
"It seems to me that doesn't continue quite as long as it did at first," she said to Grenville, as she rose at last to go alone to her cavern.... "I think you ought to rest. I wish you would."
"I will," said Sidney. "Good-night."
But, for some time after she had gone, he sat there wondering if those abominable but protective cries, that haunted the island's solitude, were actually on the wane.
"God help us if they are!" he said, to himself, but he went to bed and slept.
Elaine had not yet appeared on the scene when Grenville went down to the jungle. The morning hour was still decidedly early, but plans and impatience to be up and at work had prodded the man from his rest. The lassitude that should have followed his night of excitement had not yet laid its weight upon him.
Apparently nothing had come to the jungle scene where the tiger had met his end. The great form lay there, torn and rigid, but no sign of the cat could be discovered.
Grenville passed his trophy, presently, to examine the space beyond. The spot where the bomb had exploded was a gaping hole in the earth. This was not the place where Grenville had placed the deadly tube, which he knew must therefore have been moved—doubtless when the fuse was pulled and broken by the creature taking refuge in the tree.
All about the spot where the kill had been the shrubbery was shredded. The boar's remains had been blown away when the gap was made in the sod. The trail, Grenville saw, must be repaired or a new one must be made about the place.
He returned to the tiger, and was suddenly elated to behold the metal collar, half-hidden by the fur about his neck. He had quite forgotten this bauble, thus singularly employed, and, kneeling down to inspect it closely, not only found it was massive gold and set with costly jewels, but also discovered he must break or force a heavy link to take it from the creature.
It was not until he had brought two sharp-edged rocks to his needs that the collar was finally freed. Its weight and worth then amazed him. The band was fully two inches in width, with the edges curved up and turned under, in a simple and hammer-marked finish. It was all hand-wrought, each blow that the smith had struck with his tool being faintly recorded in the metal. The jewels—three sapphires, three rubies, and one diamond—were simply and solidly set with bands that barely clasped their bases. The rubies only were cabochon cut, the other stones gleaming with facets.
There was not a mark upon the collar's outer surface to show what was meant by its presence here in such extraordinary keeping. But Grenville presently bethought him to glance at the inner circumference. He was not in the least astonished, but he was a bit concerned, to discover a number of those mystic symbols, deeply graved in the gold, that had once been tattooed on the man sitting dead in the barque.
Here were the three hills, bounded by the water, and one with the tree on its summit, while on either side the cartouch appeared, bounded by crude drawings of the tiger. That the brute had been liberated here upon the island as a sort of sacred guardian of the cave that was mentioned by the writing found secreted with the map, Grenville could not, or did not, doubt. There was nothing more to be found engraved on the gold.
He finally slipped the heavy band about his own smooth, sun-tanned neck and went at the task of securing Elaine's promised robe. This toil was far more difficult than even his lack of proper appliances had led him to anticipate. Although he had sharpened his stub of a knife-blade to a very respectable cutting-edge, it was far too small for the business.
His doggedness and application were the assets on which he had most to count, and without them here he must have failed. As it was, he remained so long away that Elaine, who was up, was alarmed. And, when at last he appeared below with the heavy, striped skin across his shoulder, she started abruptly, till she saw he was not another tiger.
"I thought you might like to see the size of his hide," he said, as he brought it to the terrace, "before I take it down by the shore for tanning. I shall soak it a while in a mixture of brine and saltpeter. Both are highly preservative—-and the best the island affords."
"He was simply tremendous!" Elaine replied, when the skin had been spread on the rocks. "What have you got about your neck?"
"Oh, this?" said Grenville, removing the golden collar. "This is a symbol of royalty that his Bengal highness wore—your property now, as a trophy of the hunt."
She took it a little uncertainly as he held it forth in his hand.
"Why—it's gold!" she said. "These jewels—— The tiger was wearing this?"
"About his kingly neck."
"But how—unless someone put it on?"
"Undoubtedly someone did. He must have been a captive once, and probably escaped."
It could serve no good end to acquaint her with his actual suspicions, which might be ill-founded, after all.
"It's beautiful," she continued, gazing in admiration on the collar's simple massiveness. "But it's not for me, I'm sure." She held it out for him to take. But he bent above the skin.
"Then pitch it away," he instructed, laconically. "Toss it into the sea."
She colored, looking at him strangely. She could not throw away his property—anything of such great intrinsic value. She was baffled again, as he managed so frequently. Her hand and the golden circlet fell at her side. She could think of no appropriate speech of final rejection. A whimsical notion only arose to her groping mind.
"Fancy me wearing this priceless band of splendor," she said, "and eating with a stick!"
"It will just about fit around your waist," he conjectured, taking it from her as he rose. With easy strength he bent it in his hands, to make it more snugly conform to her slender and graceful little body.
Why should he not bend it thus, she thought, who had wrenched it from a tiger? She felt how weak and inadequate was her own diminishing struggle. But to wear this band—a symbol, almost, of Grenville's ownership—— A hot recurrence of her former pride came surging to her bosom.
"It's too heavy to wear," she told him, a trifle coldly. She once more accepted the girdle, however, despite herself, from his hand. "The tiger that wore it," she concluded, "met with a lot of trouble."
"You've met with some yourself," he answered, candidly, and he shouldered the skin and started off for the estuary's mouth.
Elaine burned suddenly scarlet, interpreting his speech in some manner of her own. Helplessly she carried the girdle to her cave, and left it there in a hollow of the rock.
The incident concerned with the tiger was practically closed. A new, bright era of security and liberty thereupon commenced, particularly for Elaine. She could not take immediate advantage of the comfort thus vouchsafed in moving about the island, but at least her worry was lessened when Grenville was obliged to venture in the jungle.
His return to the work so frequently interrupted was delayed but the briefest time. So eager did he constantly feel to accomplish his boat's completion that he had grudged every hour the tiger had cost him from his labors.
With no thought of sparing his tireless strength, he promptly resumed the task of digging and fetching the clay. Elaine might have joined him in the clearing now had not some task she was eager to complete engrossed her attentions at the shelter.
That day the remaining surface of his prostrate log was plastered by Grenville's eager hands. He likewise mixed sufficient clay to finish his furnace in the morning. The fire that was helping to hollow his log was once again ignited. Much of the old charred substance, left from previous operations, Grenville knocked away with an improvised tool of brass, in order to daub more clay inside the shell before the flames could continue removing the wood as he required.
On the following day, while the walls in his smelter were drying, Sidney wove a two-piece door of wattle—framework of creepers, plastered with clay—to fit across the orifice at the bottom of his tree. With this he felt he could regulate the draught and protect himself while removing his crucibles of metal. The top door only would be tossed aside to accomplish this latter purpose.
He likewise plastered the edges and sides of the hole that pierced his smelter. He knew the heat, when he came to melt the brass, would spread at once to all unprotected wood. After that he had still to contrive a clay-covered implement for lifting out his crucibles, and a tripod affair to be placed inside the furnace to support these crucibles upon.
What with more work done upon the boat-to-be, and a goodly portion of the afternoon expended in killing and preparing another of the pheasants for their dinner, Grenville's hours sped swiftly away.
A weary but elated craftsman he was that day-end when at length he returned for the final time to the terrace. He had been to the shore, where the tiger-hide was curing in a strong solution of brine and saltpeter, mixed in a hollow in the sand, and, having there turned it over, had washed himself to a fresh and ruddy color.
Notwithstanding the unbecoming growth of beard upon his face, he appeared to Elaine the most commanding figure she had ever taken time to inspect. He looked every inch a master of the island, if not also of his fate and her own. But she was more than usually excited that evening, as she disappeared within her shelter.
She presently emerged with such an air of uncertainty and diffidence about her as had never before appeared since their coming to the island. But she did not hesitate in the task she had set herself to perform.
"I have finished my first bit of knitting," she said, "and there it is."
To Grenville's thorough amazement, the clean, new article held in her hand, and shyly offered for his acceptance, was a cap she had made for his head. It was not unlike a golf-cap in shape, but the visor was considerably wider, to protect his eyes from the sun.
She had woven this of finely divided creeper-core on a frame neatly made of the same. Its meshes had then been filled by fibers, snugly and neatly plaited back and forth to make it opaque to the light. The frame was firmly knitted to the cap.
"Pretty good," said Grenville, busied with several arrows. "Thanks;" and, placing it carelessly on his head, continued with his employment.
Elaine, who had conjured all her resolution to make of the presentation the merest commonplace affair, was wholly confounded in her thoughts by the man's unheard-of conduct, after all she had recently undergone before she could make him such a gift.
She had feared some demonstration of the passion shown on the ship—or at least some disturbing outburst she had armed herself to quench. But this—such scant courtesy or gratitude as this—left her absolutely impotent and baffled.
She was piqued, disappointed, chagrined. It was horrid of anyone, she was sure, to be so outrageously unfeeling. There was nothing, however, she could do, and nothing she could say. Standing there, mortified, almost angry, and conscious she was burning guiltily red with various emotions that he did not even notice, was such a footless and irritating proceeding, with the situation robbed of its point.
She turned away, fairly ready to cry with vexation, and pretended to make herself busy with things already well prepared for their evening meal. But the new rebellion of her nature, partially begotten by the uncontrolled and uncontrollable impulses loosed in the jungle the previous night, when Grenville lay helplessly stunned, with his head loosely pillowed on her knee, was not to be longer contained. She presently fled from before the cavern, across, through the shadows of the terrace, to the hidden shelf where Grenville had angled for fish.
There she suddenly sank to her knees on the rocks and covered her face with her hands.
"I hate him!" she said, in a hot and passionate utterance, suggestive of a sob. "I hate him! I hate him! I hate every man that ever lived—and you, Gerald Fenton, as much as all the others!"
She snatched off the ring from her finger. It was Fenton's ring, with a single stone that gleamed in the failing light. It seemed to her to represent the man far absent from her side.
"It was you who brought it all about!" she continued, in her fiercely waging conflict, and, overwrought, she cast it down on the ledge as if it burned her palm.
It bounded lightly where it struck and, clearing the shelf, fell swiftly downward to the water. A gasp and a moan escaped her lips together. Vividly, of a sudden, she remembered Grenville's prediction that she would throw it away in the sea.
"Oh, Gerald, I didn't mean to!" she moaned. "I didn't! You've got to believe me!" She sank farther forward on the ledge, her face closely hidden in the curve of her loose brown arm. She wept and wept there, bitterly, in a mood of mixed emotions.
"I hate him! I hate him!" she said, as before. "It's not my fault in the least!"
And after a time, as Grenville did not come, she returned to the camp alone.
The following day was calmer for Elaine, and vastly interesting, since Grenville's smelting operations were begun. She told herself that interest only laid its hold upon her nature, and, being a woman, she knew.
The clay that lined his hollow tree was sufficiently dry at last for Grenville's fire. The other accessories, all more thinly coated, were likewise ready for his use. He began in the morning to heat his natural chimney against the actual needs of afternoon. The small fire kindled upon its hearth established at once the efficiency of the draught.
Not without a certain boyish eagerness in the culmination of his labors, Sidney began the assemblage of his various paraphernalia an hour at least before noon. His molds and crucibles he carefully brought from the summit of the terrace, disposing them as conveniently as his crude conditions permitted. All his rusted scraps and useless bits of brass and bronze were divided into parcels, while salt, some powdered charcoal, and an over-abundant supply of saltpeter were provided to be used as flux, according as the smelting might demand. He could not be certain of which he should use till experiment should determine which, if any, rendered good results.
The principal difficulty, he soon discovered, would be adding the fuel to his flames. His smelter-door was not well arranged for this essential business. He expected, however, to heap a considerable quantity of wood inside before the chimney should become too hot. Later he thought a lot of short material could be readily introduced, and against this need he gathered an impressive heap of branches, which he broke to a workable length.
Elaine was with him when at last the work began. She was far more excited than Grenville seemed, since it appeared to her no less than a miracle that any man, in a place like this, should dare assume such a mastery over Jovian metals and flame. She had never before seen anything of smelting. This intimate acquaintance with its mysteries seemed to her a privilege, greatly enhanced by the fact that the lord of it all pretended she was actually helpful.
She assisted when he bound the sections of his clay-made molds together. She handed him fuel when the furnace-door was opened and gushes of heat came voluminously forth.
The fire, which for a time had loudly roared, was now more intense and quiet. The volumes of smoke, which the "chimney" had belched, had likewise finally ceased. Only a quiver of superheated air and a greenish bit of gas and fume now ascended to the sky.
From time to time, Grenville opened the top of the door to peer within. He wrinkled his features, in the waves of heat, and held his hand before his face. At length he adjusted his "tongs" about a crucible and drew it entirely forth.
It was white with heat, its surface sparkling with a hundred tiny stars that died on its glowing surface.
"Just toss in some of that stuff there on the leaf," he quietly instructed Elaine. "It will soon be ready to pour."
The "stuff" was flux, and Elaine obeyed directions like the stanch assistant that she was. She wondered what was coming next.
It came very soon. She was certain no ruddier figure of Vulcan, employing mighty flame, had ever been presented than now when Grenville made ready for the climax of his work.
He removed the door as he had not previously done, and set it aside from his path. He thrust in his tongs, while flame and heat came pouring out to paint him a deep and glowing color. Then, seemingly hotter than ever before, and smoking goldenly above its blinding incandescence, the first of the crucibles, itself fairly dripping, where some of the flux had trickled down its surface, was supported over to the molds, to be quickly and vigorously skimmed of its oxidized matter.
But the molten brass, indescribably beautiful, with ruby and gold and silver gleams imbedded and breaking in its substance, was the wonder of it all. Elaine stood entranced, to see it flow and fill the hollows of the molds.
The second was hastily drawn from the flame, and then the third and last. But not till all lay finally empty and smoking on the earth, their surfaces rapidly dulling, did Grenville pause to look at Elaine and smile.
"Can't even tell what we've done," he said, "till the molds are cooled and opened."
"Must you wait very long till you know?"
"I couldn't wait long," Grenville answered. "I'm too much of a curious kid."
As a matter of fact, brass poured in a mold begins to harden at once. In less than fifteen minutes, Grenville was gingerly untwisting the hot copper wire that bound each mold together. Soon after that the first of his tools, a heavy and serviceable chisel, lay uncovered to the air.
It was still glowing hot, although no longer red. It was darker, less brassy in appearance than Elaine had expected to see, but it seemed to her a wonderful thing to be made of those useless bits of metal.
The tool next in importance was much like a butcher's cleaver—an implement intended for cutting or hacking wood or branches, either to clear a path in the jungle or to rough out anything of timber. The edge of this casting was imperfect, where the metal had failed to flow. Both it and the chisel had a thin fringe of brass along those sections where the halves of the mold had come together, but this would be readily broken away and was quite to be expected.
Smaller chisels, a blade that Sidney expected to notch along its edge to make a species of saw, and a number of smaller implements were contained in the other sets of molds. None of these was perfect, and one or two merely served to instruct the master-molder in the way to go to work another time. But the net results were highly satisfactory, and seemed to Elaine a veritable triumph.
The poorness of their quality as tools with which to accomplish swift results developed the following day. Grenville had melted a part of his lead and cast the head of a hammer. With this and the largest of his chisels he attacked the log chosen for a boat.
So long as his gouging was confined to the portions charred by the fire, the tool held well to the labor. Its edge soon went to pieces, however, when the solider substance was encountered. It was sharpened repeatedly. He early foresaw that, work as he might, the business of conjuring forth a boat from material so raw was certain to be slow, if not exhausting.
Indeed, at this time a tedious period began. There were days and days of dull, stupid repetition ahead like the ones that were presently past. Fire after fire he maintained beneath the log, which must always be newly plastered with the clay. Hour after hour he chiseled off the black and dusty flakes that the flames would leave behind, since it hastened the work to present a new surface to the heat. It seemed as if the task could never have an end.
But, if this was a season of dogged application to an uncongenial business, it was likewise the one long era of peace vouchsafed to the exiled pair. There was nothing to rouse a sense of alarm in any near portion of the jungle. And, if those fast succeeding days brought no welcome sign of a steamer approaching on the distant blue horizon, neither did their lengthening hours develop those craft upon the sea for which Grenville was constantly and apprehensively watching. They were happy days, as well as peaceful. Concerning the ring she had lost in the sea, Elaine could not force herself to worry. Grenville never, by any chance, gave her occasion for alarm.
There were many full afternoon vacations from his work when the fire was left to hollow out his log that Sidney spent at her side. He wove her a hammock of the creeper withes and built a shady bower by the shore. He had sawed her a comb from the tortoiseshell, bent hairpins of the copper wire, and made her a comfortable couch. Her tiger-skin robe he had worked with his hands to a soft and pliant finish. The skin of a cheeta he had killed he used to supplement his rapidly vanishing shirt. Sewing was strongly, if not prettily, accomplished with such needles and thread as his ready ingenuity provided.
They were busy days that were doomed, however, to pall. Elaine was assisting with a loom to weave a sail, while between times Grenville chipped out the stone for the bath he had promised on the ledge. He became a skillful marksman with his bow, and knew every animal trail the island afforded. In many of these his traps did deadly service. Their larder rarely lacked for meat, made tender by paw-paw leaves. Elaine caught many a silver fish that they roasted together in the sand.
But her gaze more frequently roved afar, for the ship that did not come. The days were growing sultrier, and constantly more monotonous.
The new moon had come and waxed to the full and was once more waning in the heavens. They were marvelous nights the old orb made upon the island, but always weird and exciting a sense, in Elaine at least, of loneliness and aloofness from the world. On their cliff above the murmurous tides, she and Grenville frequently sat for hours at a time without exchanging a word.
Such times were fraught with strangely exciting moments; and subtle tinglings came unbidden to her nature, giving her pleasures wildly lawless and precious beyond expression. Yet she feared them also when they came, and refused to give them meaning.
But to-night a new wistfulness burned in her eyes as she turned to her silent companion.
"I wonder," she said, "if we couldn't put a fresher flag on our pole to-morrow."
"Sure shot," said Sid, "the freshest flag that ever grew."
She was silent again for several moments. Then she said:
"What should we do if a year went by—two years, perhaps, or even more—and a ship should never come?"
"Do?" said Grenville. "Sail away."
"I know. But I mean, supposing we found no place to go—and had to come back every time."
"H'm!" said Grenville, rubbing the corner of his jaw, "you probably also mean to suppose we were always unmolested."
"Why, yes, of course. Who could come to molest us here?"
"Molesters," he said, "if anyone. But perhaps they never would."
He had given no answer to her question, which she hardly cared to repeat. It was one of the times, which frequently came, when she could not prevent herself from wondering if this strong, primal man she had once called a brute could have utterly forgotten the passionate declaration made on the steamship "Inca" the day before the wreck.
She wondered also, had he meant it at the time? Or had one of his many inscrutable moods possessed him, barely for the moment? She had never dared recently confess to herself what feelings might instantly invade her tingling nature should she learn he had only pretended, perhaps on some wager with Gerald, as a test of her faithfulness and love.
It was womanlike, merely, on her part, to desire to know his mind. No woman may long resent being loved by a strong and masterful man. And Elaine was delightfully typical of all her delightful sex.
"Well," she presently said, "we've been here now much longer than we ever expected that day when we arrived."
His gaze, which had been averted, now swung to a meeting with her own. She had never seemed lovelier, braver, more sweetly disposed than now. The moonlight deepened her luminous eyes till the man fairly held his breath.
"Elaine," he said, finally, glancing once more towards the silvered sea, "what is your notion of love?"
The shock of the word threw all her wits into confusion.
"My notion?" she stammered, helplessly, feeling the hot flames leap like floods of his molten metal to her neck, her face, and her bosom. "I don't believe—I have—any notions."
"Your convictions, then?" he amended. "Or, if you like, your principles?"
"My—my principles of—of all that—are—just about like—everyone else's, I suppose," she managed to answer, fragmentarily, "—being honest—and true—and faithful—unto death."
"To the one that youreallylove?"
"Why—certainly—of course." The heat in her face increased, so significant had she felt his words with that low even tone of emphasis.
He stared so long at the sea after that she began to suspect he had not even heard her reply. After a time she was tempted to play, just a trifle, with the fire. She added, "Why did you ask?"
"Wanted to know." Once more he fell dumb, and again she waited, afraid he would, and more afraid he would not, continue the delicate topic. Once again, also, she was tempted.
"And what," she inquired, "is your—notion?"
He did not turn. "Of love or crocodiles?"
"Of—of love—was what you asked me."
"I believe I did," he responded. "Oh, about the same as yours!"
Elaine had received but scanty satisfaction. After another long silence she ventured to say:
"We might have to be here a year—or even longer."
He turned to her directly. "Do you like it here, Elaine?"
She would not reply, and therefore demanded, "Do you?"
"I'm a savage," he admitted. "This sort of thing appeals to something in my blood."
"I know," she answered, understandingly, "—building up an empire with your naked hands, unaided—conquering metals and elements—wresting the island's dominion from the brutes. Naturally you love it!"
He reddened. "I can't make an apple dumpling and make it right! This island's dominion? Great Cæsar's frying-pan—this is a regular picnic-ground, with everything on earth provided!"
She smiled. "And things all made and ready, including tools and powder, not to mention a tiger-skin rug.... You refuse to admit you like it for itself?"
"Like it or not," he answered, "we must get away—and home."
"Home," she repeated, oddly. "Home.... I wonder if home will ever seem—— It certainly would be wonderful, a miracle, I think, to see a steamer really coming—and to go on board and have it take us back to—everything—somewhere home—— But we'd sometimes think of this—a little?"
"Probably."
To save his life, he could not banish thoughts of Fenton.
"I'm sure we would," murmured Elaine. She gazed away, to the jungle's softened shadows. She wanted to cry out abruptly that she loved it to-night, with a love that could never die. She wanted the comfort of something, she hardly dared wonder what. After another long silence, she finally said, with eyes averted and excitement throbbing in her veins:
"I know the name of this little place—do you?"
"No," he said, wondering what she might have discovered. "What do you think it is called?"
It seemed to Elaine her heart pounded out her reply.
"The Isle of Shalimar."
If Grenville knew the Indian name for Garden, he made no sign that she could read. He made no reply whatsoever, but gazed as before at the sea.
He was turning at last when a low, but distinctly briefer, recurrence of the island's haunting wails arose to disturb the wondrous calm—as well as his peace of mind. There could be no doubt the tidal phenomenon was gradually but steadily failing.
What might occur when it altogether ceased was more than the man could divine. He felt a vague dread of that approaching hour and of what it might develop.
"It must be after midnight," he said, at last, "—time for night's ordinary dreams."
Yet, when he was finally stretched on his bed, he did not lose himself in slumber. Instead he lay thinking of the island's haunting sounds and the cave somewhere underneath the headland.
He had meant to attempt an inspection of this place, if only to gratify a natural curiosity. The thought occurred to him now that, in case of dire necessity, it might afford such a shelter as was not to be found on any other portion of the island. It was not a thing to be neglected. He made up his mind that the following day he would make an exploration.
The ladder that Grenville constructed in the morning was not entirely new. He had found upon testing the original contrivance, made for his séance with the tiger, that, although the creepers had become quite dry, they were neither weak nor brittle.
He fortified the older section with additional material, however, to make absolutely certain it would not abruptly part and drop him into the sea. All morning he worked, while his smoldering fires continued to eat out the hollow for his boat, securing new length to the rungs already provided, since the distance down from the brink of the cliff was fully one hundred feet.
To Elaine he explained that he thought perhaps a cave might exist in the rock. The wailing sounds, it was easy to argue, would indicate some such cavity, which he felt it important to examine. If she somewhat divined the further fact that he hoped to discover a possible retreat, should unforeseen dangers threaten, she made no revelation of her thought.
It was not without considerable anxiety, however, that she finally discovered precisely what he meant to attempt. His ladder, she was certain, was far too frail for any such business as climbing down, above that boiling tide. One careless step, or a parting of the strands, and nothing on earth could save the man from death on the jutting rocks below. She had glanced at the waters under the cliff, and their crystal depths were not at all reassuring.
The thorough precautions against a mishap that Grenville finally completed considerably lessened her fears, yet she had no wish to watch him descend when at length he slipped over the edge. She was gazing with fixed and wide-open eyes at the heap of rocks in which he had fastened the ladder.
The matter to Grenville seemed simple enough. The brink overhung the wall itself, in consequence of which the ladder swung quite free, down the face of the scarp, till it touched at a jutting ledge below. It swayed to and fro and sagged a bit loosely at some of the rungs, but it could not be broken by his weight.
He made no attempt at a rapid descent, neither did he pause to enjoy the scenery. When the ledge was reached he rested, made certain no sharp-edged stone could impinge upon and perhaps cut into his twisted creepers, and again proceeded downward.
His course for a matter of two or three fathoms was rendered rather more difficult by the fact the ladder lay closely bent against the wall, instead of hanging free. The rock face was pitted and exceedingly rough, its indentations ill-arranged for footholds and far too treacherous for any such employment.
Grenville was nearly at the lower lip of this projection before he attempted a look below to determine what he was approaching. He discovered then it was undercut again—and likewise that his ladder was considerably short. Its lower end dangled about with irregular gyrations as he shifted his weight from rung to rung. It was fully two yards above the water. There was nothing in sight on which to plant his feet, so far as he could discern from the point then occupied.
He continued down the ledge. When he reached its base, his suspicions were immediately confirmed. It overhung a cavern, which was not, however, the cave. To the final rung but one of his ladder he descended, and there he rested to have a look about.
He was hanging directly before a massive pot-hole in the cliff—a huge, roughly rounded sort of chamber, the roof of which was arched. On the left, it shared its pitted wall with a second and smaller chamber. On the right, its edge was jaggedly broken against a yawning hole. This hole was undoubtedly the cave-mouth described by the documents found in the hidden tube.
From this point only, as Grenville could see, would its mouth be readily discovered. Thick curtains of greenery, draped from its neighboring walls of rock, would shield it from view from passing boats, unless they should nose to its portals. This, with a swirling and dangerous tide, no craft would be likely to attempt.
The shrubbery, hanging so thickly from the ledge, afforded Grenville a puzzle. He knew it could not be a seaweed, since the tide never rose to such a level. He presently realized it was simply an air plant of unusually luxuriant growth. Its roots had found lodgment in a crevice, where nothing would be likely to disturb it in its possession.
Concerning the possible contents of the cave, its extent, or immediate surroundings, there was nothing to be discovered from his ladder, twist as he might or crane his neck to stare in the cavern's mouth.
He had practically determined to return to the top, shift his ladder along, and once more make the descent, when he realized his effort would be wasted. A thick, broken shelf of the pitted tufa jutted many feet out above the cave, and even beyond the growing weed. Should he hang his ladder directly before the opening, he would find himself, when he came to its end, swung helplessly over the water.
He could see distinctly where the final base of the wall projected into the tideway. It would certainly be no less than ten feet removed from the nearest point he could possibly reach by this particular method.
It occurred to his mind he could lengthen his strands, drop himself off the ladder-end, and swim to the edge of the cave. But, even as he turned to examine the physical features afforded to a swimmer, a huge dark form loafed like a shadow through the crystal tide, to rise beyond and cut the sparkling surface with a blackish dorsal fin. There was no mistaking Mr. Shark.
Grenville nodded, grimly. "Thanks for the timely suggestion," he said, as the monster once more sank. He presently added, "It's a boat or no explorations." Somewhat disappointedly, he returned up the ladder to the top.
"The cave is there," he told Elaine, who promptly sat down, in sheer relief, when she saw him finally safe, "but it has to be entered from the water."
"Oh!" said Elaine. "But why does it have to be entered?"
"Well," said Sidney, at a loss for a better argument, "it might be full of treasure;" and he smiled.
Elaine was no less ready with her answer. "Treasure is certainly indispensable to us here. No wonder we've felt that something was strangely lacking."
"There you are," he rejoined. "I think I can paddle the raft about the cliff, for the tide could never be better."
She was certain that Grenville attached some unusual importance to an inspection of the cave.
"Couldn't I help?" she asked him. "What was the fault of the ladder?"
"Fully six feet too short. Perhaps you'd better watch for passing steamers. If we missed one—whom should we blame?"
They had slowly returned to the shelter, where the table was attractively spread.
"What a luncheon!" said Grenville, enthusiastically. "I'll eat in a rush and be back before you know I've gone." He certainly ate with lively promise.
But, after the raft was launched on the tide, he lost all sense of time. He had left his shoes and stockings on the shore. He had brought a torch, lighted, which he lashed in an upright position on the raft. Wading and paddling, punting, pulling, and at times even pushing his craft along the beach, he warmed to his work in the briefest space, since the tide could hardly have been more favorable to his needs.
The pole he had brought had a hook at the end, bound firmly in place with copper wire. This was an excellent provision, especially when he came to the cliff, where wading was out of the question. He was thus enabled to catch at a ledge, or any open crevice, and draw his unwieldy float along, while fending it off from various rocks on which it might otherwise have pounded.
His work was hard and slow. The distance was not discouraging, however, and with some of the swirls to assist, here and there, he finally came to a broken sort of cape, from which he readily saw his dangling ladder. After that a hot bit of fighting was required to maintain his position near the wall. The tide was uneasy—a hungry, ugly swirl that alternately came and subsided.
When he passed it at last his task was done, for the cave was a stone's toss away. It was not even then to be seen, and its presence in the cliff would scarcely have been suspected. But Grenville knew the luxuriant plant that grew across a portion of its entrance. When he presently moored his raft to a rock fairly under the shadow of the weed, the cave was just above him.
Under his feet the ledge was rough and sloping. It was pitted so completely as to form a rude natural stairway to the opening under the overhanging shelf. This mouth to the cavern was hardly six feet wide and not more than four in height. Its access was comparatively easy.
Grenville, with his torch in hand, was presently gazing within. Obliged to stoop, and beholding nothing but absolute darkness ahead of his light, he stumbled against a lumpy vein of rock—and nearly met with disaster. He barely halted at the edge of a pool of ebon water.
After all his effort to gain the cave, it appeared to be filled with this inklike accumulation. The pool was absolutely still. Not a ripple disturbed its shining surface. How deep it was and how far it extended from the ledge that held it from flowing into the sea, could not be gauged by Grenville's torch, as he held it aloft to stare at the wall of velvet gloom.
He sounded a note that rolled about and reverberated weirdly. But he could not determine from the echoes how far the waves had traveled.
Casting his dull-red illumination to the left, and lower down, he proceeded a little along the ledge, till it merged in an upright wall. There was nothing at all to be seen in this direction save water and rock, that faded away into Stygian darkness beyond.
He retraced his steps and explored the ledge on the right. This led him considerably further than the first had done before it was similarly ended. He was then aware the cavern was of no inconsiderable dimensions, at least with regard to its width. He raised his eyes towards the ceiling, where nothing was to be seen.
At length he bethought him of another test—that of throwing lumps of rock against the walls. There were fragments in plenty scattered loosely at his feet. The first one he threw went straight out ahead—and presently thumped on something solid. He reckoned the distance some sixty feet away, but admitted it might have been eighty.
Every missile he cast right, left, or at an angle promptly reported a wall; and some plumped back into water. The cave was not gigantic, but all its floor was apparently flooded. His hand, which he thrust in the water where he stood, groped blindly and found no bottom. He rolled up his sleeve and tried again, without more definite results. The water, however, was warm.
"Good place for a swim, in any case," he told himself, aloud; and, planting his torch with a sudden determination that he would not retreat with information so utterly meager, he stripped off his clothing at once. He let himself into the ebon depths, with his torch held well above the water. He had rather expected to be able to wade, but he sank to his neck without sounding to the bottom.
Swimming almost perpendicularly, employing one hand only, he presently lost all sight of the walls and was out in an unknown pool of blackness. Save for a slight sensation of its weirdness, the experience was decidedly pleasant. He tasted the water as he swam and found that it was fresh. He turned to look out at the opening, but could barely see light through the weeds.
Some twenty or thirty feet from the ledge, his feet encountered a ridge. It was stone, and across it he waded to a greater depth beyond. Yet once again he was soon enabled to stand erect and walk along the bottom. The broken, uneven surface that he felt with his feet made his progress slow and careful.
He had presently crossed the underground pond, up the sloping bank of which he was soon making rapid progress. He emerged on a dry ledge beyond. Even then the walls were not to be seen till he walked a rod straight onward.
The briefest examination sufficed to establish the fact he had come to a sort of natural antechamber to the larger cavern he had crossed. Also, apparently, the entire place was as empty as a last year's bird's-nest.
Vaguely disappointed, though he hardly knew why, the man surveyed the place anew, by the light that entered at the opening as well as by that of his torch. He saw at once that, could it be drained, the place would afford a retreat of amazing security for anyone needful of shelter. He was also certain he could drain it in a day by blasting through the ledge of rock that blocked the entrance from the sea and so retained the pool.
With one more brief and cursory examination of the rocky structure about him, he was turning away when something foreign about a slab of stone, that seemed a fragment of the solid wall, attracted his attention.
He laid his hand upon its top as if to pull it down. It came away so readily it all but fell on his feet. Behind it the crudest sort of masonry walled up a natural door.
Ten minutes later, standing on the heap of blocks he had tumbled rapidly down in forming a gap through four feet at least of this bulkhead, Grenville thrust his torch within a nichelike chamber of the cavern.
A low exclamation of astonishment burst from his lips at the vision thus suddenly encountered.
The place was a tomb for dead kings' gold and precious stones that threw back the gleams from his torch!